September 2, 2011

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I was dying for some good pasta. After the terrible experience at a supposedly new and hip good Italian in Taipei, I needed to get the real thing. Dyson 2000 suggested that we do lunch at Gold, where Harlan's pastas have never failed us. We decided to rope in another victim for the meal.

I chatted with Harlan a little about my recent move to Taipei, and told him I needed to come back for a pasta fix at his place. Harlan may rub some people the wrong way, but he's always been good to me. And the man CAN cook, which is what matters most to me.

We decided to share 3 pastas as we were greedy and didn't want to stick to just one dish:

Hand-crafted tagliatelle, Italian wild boar ragout, melting organic egg and shaved Pecorino cheese - the first pasta that made me fall in love with Harlan's food, from the moment I tasted it almost 3 years ago. Dyson 2000 claims this is her comfort food, and I have to say that time and again I have come back to this dish. Lovely orange yolk, and the whole thing was just perfect. As good as it ever was.

Truffle tagliolini, Italian ovuli and porcini mushrooms and Tasmanian black truffles - a lovely dish with loads of fragrance from all the shrooms. Normally porcini alone would make a great dish, and the ovuli would be a bonus, but wow! Once you shave black truffle on top... The fragrance and flavors lingered in my mouth... and I would have been perfectly happy to leave it this way.

Spinobello pasta, Spanish red prawns, wild zucchini, cherry tomatoes and bottaga di muggine - no, I just can't get enough! I'll grab any carabineros I can lay my hands on. Apparently it is approaching the end of the season, so of course we were gonna order this... and they made sure we got 3 of them prawns so we didn't have to fight. The zucchini was lovely, and I prefer this to the fava beans I had a few months ago. I picked up the head with my hands, dissected it and sucked it dry. The intense flavors of the prawns replaced those of the truffles and shrooms.

I was happy, and so was Dyson 2000. We got exactly what we wanted out of this lunch. The only thing left to do was to sip a little espresso and get the digestive process going.